Ahrens

Chapelgate senior shortstop Lauren Ahrens, who has batted leadoff since the first game of her freshman year, has made her mark on the program as she enters the final few weeks of her high school career. She is its career leader in batting average (.410), hits (108), RBIs (104), runs scored (126), stolen bases (55), triples (14) and home runs (six). Numbers aside, Ahrens' complete attention is on one thing: Helping the team capture its first Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland B Conference championship.

Chapelgate senior shortstop Lauren Ahrens, who has batted leadoff since the first game of her freshman year, has made her mark on the program as she enters the final few weeks of her high school career. She is its career leader in batting average (.410), hits (108), RBIs (104), runs scored (126), stolen bases (55), triples (14) and home runs (six). Numbers aside, Ahrens' complete attention is on one thing: Helping the team capture its first Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland B Conference championship.

Lucille Dorothy Ahrens, 89, department store clerkLucille Dorothy Ahrens, a retired department store sales clerk, died Oct. 14 of heart failure at Colonial Manor Nursing Home in Catonsville. She was 89.The Chester resident had worked as a sales clerk at Hutzler's and Hochschild-Kohn department stores, and later was a clerk typist for Publicker Industries of Baltimore, a liquor distributor. She retired in 1973.The former Lucille Schuler was born in West Baltimore and was a graduate of Western High School.

Over the next six months, the musicals of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty will be so well represented on Baltimore stages, they practically constitute an unofficial Ahrens and Flaherty festival. The celebration has begun, with an enjoyable, rare revival of their 1988 musical Lucky Stiff at Cockpit in Court. Next month, the Maryland Arts Festival will stage the pair's 1998 Broadway musical Ragtime, and in December, Center Stage will produce their 1990 show Once on This Island. Although musicals can be made from almost any subject, Lucky Stiff stems from a highly bizarre source - a comic crime novel called The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, by Michael Butterworth, which includes a corpse among its main characters.

Before Greg Pfeiffer and his daughter, Sarah, enrolled in Howard County General Hospital's Individual Weight Loss Counseling program, they rarely exercised and ate whatever tasted good.Now, they regularly visit the gym and roller skate. And when they stop by Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, they order a grilled chicken sandwich and side salad instead of a hamburger, fries and shake."It was wonderful," the Columbia resident said of the eight-week course he and his 11-year-old daughter completed last month.

The Vice Fund went on sale to the public this month, billing itself as a "socially irresponsible fund" that will put investors' assets into tobacco, gambling, liquor and defense. The Vice Fund's founder, a Texas research and investment outfit with $240 million in assets under management, says the industries it has singled out for the Vice Fund are easy for the public to understand and largely recession-proof. The economy could boom or slump, but a cigarette still gives smokers a jolt of nicotine that keeps them hooked.

At halftime of Westminster's boys lacrosse game at Mount Hebron yesterday, it looked as if it would be a day Owls coach Jim Peters soon would like to forget.But shortly after Westminster's 10-9 come-from-behind win, Peters said, "I'll be an old man in a wheelchair still talking about this game."The Owls (4-0) sleepwalked through the first half as Mount Hebron (2-2) built a five-goal lead. After Hebron scored the opening goal of the third quarter to make it 8-2, Westminster charged back with eight unanswered goals and held off a late Hebron rally to come away with the 10-9 win.Senior attacker Chris Ahrens led the way with four second-half goals and Jamie Grocki's unassisted goal with 3:17 left in the game gave the Owls a 9-8 lead they never would relinquish.

The Liberty lacrosse team probably has seen enough of Westminster attackman John Bolesta.Bolesta scored six goals and had one assist earlier this season in a victory for Westminster. Last night, Bolesta struck again, scoring five goals and handing out an assist as Westminster rolled over visiting Liberty, 14-2, in a Carroll County game.Westminster (7-1, 3-1) struggled on offense at the start, scoring only one goal in the first 13 minutes. The Owls experienced some problems passing and executing plays.

A veteran local sailor and a Naval Academy midshipman have been awarded the Arthur B. Hanson U.S. Sailing Rescue medal for quick-thinking, life-saving work in two incidents recently.Annapolitan Chad Doherty, who is chief of the Auxiliary Boating and Consumer Division of the U.S. Coast Guard, and race committee chairman of the Cape St. Claire Yacht Club, received the medal for his rescue of a local couple in April.Doherty and his crew were sailing on the Magothy River on his Pearson 26 Flambeau when they saw a man fall overboard from a Pearson 30. By the time they reached the other boat, another crew member from the Pearson 30 had also fallen into the water.

THE socially responsible Domini Social Equity Fund, which is based in New York's SoHo and avoids tobacco, alcohol, weapon and gambling stocks, has delivered a total return of 14 percent the past 12 months. The socially irresponsible Vice Fund, which is based in Dallas and partakes of the above-named categories like Dean Martin drank martinis, has produced a 29 percent return in 12 months and likes its prospects just fine. The wages of sin are death, St. Paul told the Romans, but apparently one can do quite nicely meanwhile in one's individual retirement account.

JUST WHEN the socially responsible investing movement was gaining some respect for better performance, along comes an insurgent: the socially irresponsible mutual fund. The Dallas-based Vice Fund posted a 1-year return of 33.82 percent for the year ending June 30, predominantly by investing in gambling, alcohol, tobacco and defense. Manager Dan Ahrens considers these industries recession-proof despite their political incorrectness. In fact, the so-called sin stocks have performed well in downturns on the theory that consumers will drown their financial woes in vice.

THE socially responsible Domini Social Equity Fund, which is based in New York's SoHo and avoids tobacco, alcohol, weapon and gambling stocks, has delivered a total return of 14 percent the past 12 months. The socially irresponsible Vice Fund, which is based in Dallas and partakes of the above-named categories like Dean Martin drank martinis, has produced a 29 percent return in 12 months and likes its prospects just fine. The wages of sin are death, St. Paul told the Romans, but apparently one can do quite nicely meanwhile in one's individual retirement account.

By Kathy Bergren Smith and Kathy Bergren Smith,SPECIAL TO THE SUN | December 9, 2002

LOOK! HERE is a perfect tree!" said Megan Lawson of Owings Mills to her sister Jessica Ahrens of Waldorf, pointing to a 6 1/2 -foot Douglas fir. Ahrens was skeptical. "Let's keep going," she said and marched on with her mother, Bev Lawson, husband, Clayton Ahrens, and baby Megan. The group passed from tree to tree on a cold November day at Nicholson's Tree Farm in Bristol. On 100 rolling acres of South County farmland, the Nicholsons have about 17,000 trees, from seedlings to 15-footers, to choose from - and Jessica Ahrens is particularly choosy.

The Vice Fund went on sale to the public this month, billing itself as a "socially irresponsible fund" that will put investors' assets into tobacco, gambling, liquor and defense. The Vice Fund's founder, a Texas research and investment outfit with $240 million in assets under management, says the industries it has singled out for the Vice Fund are easy for the public to understand and largely recession-proof. The economy could boom or slump, but a cigarette still gives smokers a jolt of nicotine that keeps them hooked.

Lucille Dorothy Ahrens, 89, department store clerkLucille Dorothy Ahrens, a retired department store sales clerk, died Oct. 14 of heart failure at Colonial Manor Nursing Home in Catonsville. She was 89.The Chester resident had worked as a sales clerk at Hutzler's and Hochschild-Kohn department stores, and later was a clerk typist for Publicker Industries of Baltimore, a liquor distributor. She retired in 1973.The former Lucille Schuler was born in West Baltimore and was a graduate of Western High School.

Mission: To study, interpret, preserve and enhance public awareness of Maryland's archaeological heritage -- created by the state's diverse inhabitants over the past 12,000 years. Since its inception in 1964, lay and professional archaeologists of the statewide organization annually participate in numerous events and activities, including workshops, excavations, lectures, displays and processing and cataloging artifacts.Latest accomplishment: Publication of "Feast of the Dead: Aboriginal Ossuaries in Maryland," a book about communal graves in which the skeletal remains of multiple individuals, gathered from their original places of burial -- often years after death -- have been reburied.

JUST WHEN the socially responsible investing movement was gaining some respect for better performance, along comes an insurgent: the socially irresponsible mutual fund. The Dallas-based Vice Fund posted a 1-year return of 33.82 percent for the year ending June 30, predominantly by investing in gambling, alcohol, tobacco and defense. Manager Dan Ahrens considers these industries recession-proof despite their political incorrectness. In fact, the so-called sin stocks have performed well in downturns on the theory that consumers will drown their financial woes in vice.

Before Greg Pfeiffer and his daughter, Sarah, enrolled in Howard County General Hospital's Individual Weight Loss Counseling program, they rarely exercised and ate whatever tasted good.Now, they regularly visit the gym and roller skate. And when they stop by Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, they order a grilled chicken sandwich and side salad instead of a hamburger, fries and shake."It was wonderful," the Columbia resident said of the eight-week course he and his 11-year-old daughter completed last month.

The Liberty lacrosse team probably has seen enough of Westminster attackman John Bolesta.Bolesta scored six goals and had one assist earlier this season in a victory for Westminster. Last night, Bolesta struck again, scoring five goals and handing out an assist as Westminster rolled over visiting Liberty, 14-2, in a Carroll County game.Westminster (7-1, 3-1) struggled on offense at the start, scoring only one goal in the first 13 minutes. The Owls experienced some problems passing and executing plays.